Product Description

Guy Montag was a fireman whose job it was to start fires.

The system was simple. Everyone understood it. Books were for burning ... along with the houses in which they were hidden.

Guy Montag enjoyed his job. He had been a fireman for ten years, and he had never questioned the pleasure of the midnight runs nor the joy of watching pages consumed by flames. He never questioned anything until he met a seventeen-year-old girl who told him of a past when people were not afraid.

When he meets a professor who tells him of a future in which people could think, Guy suddenly realizes what he must do. 208 pages, paperback. Ancillary essays on the novel's context and legacy are also included.

Publisher's Description

Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 is a masterwork of twentieth-century literature set in a bleak, dystopian future.

Guy Montag is a fireman. In his world, where television rules and literature is on the brink of extinction, firemen start fires rather than put them out. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden.

Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But then he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television.

When Mildred attempts suicide and Clarisse suddenly disappears, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known. He starts hiding books in his home, and when his pilfering is discovered, the fireman has to run for his life.

Author Bio

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) was the author of more than three dozen books, including Fahrenheit 451, The Martian Chronicles, The Illustrated Man, and Something Wicked This Way Comes, as well as hundreds of short stories. He wrote for the theater, cinema, and TV, including the screenplay for John Huston’s Moby Dick and the Emmy Award–winning teleplay The Halloween Tree, and adapted for television sixty-five of his stories for The Ray Bradbury Theater. He was the recipient of the 2000 National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters, the 2007 Pulitzer Prize Special Citation, and numerous other honors.

Editorial Reviews

“Brilliant . . . Startling and ingenious . . . Mr. Bradbury’s account of this insane world, which bears many alarming resemblances to our own, is fascinating.” —Orville Prescott, The New York Times“A masterpiece . . . A glorious American classic everyone should read: It’s life-changing if you read it as a teen, and still stunning when you reread it as an adult.” —Alice Hoffman, The Boston Globe“The sheer lift and power of a truly original imagination exhilarates . . . His is a very great and unusual talent.” —Christopher Isherwood, Tomorrow“One of this country’s most beloved writers . . . A great storyteller, sometimes even a mythmaker, a true American classic.” —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post

Fahrenheit 451 is a classic written by Ray Bradbury. While there are some uses of harsh language, and some difficult scenes are in the book, a mature reader (I'm not going to suggest a grade or age because each person matures at a different rate) will accept that they offer context to the story as a wholeâ€”even if they are personally offense. I didn't read it till I was 25, and I'm not sure I would have appreciated it before then.

In this dystopian future, books are actively sought after to be destroyed. The only source of information, entertainment, and venue for learning is in radio and TV broadcasts which are preapproved for consumption and essentially brainwash society into thinking that their way is the only acceptable way. The story follows Guy Montag whose job it is to seek out and burn book. He has a rather "normal" life until a couple of events shake his world.

After his wife attempts suicide and a woman decides to be burnt alive with her books, Montag begins to wonder what is so special about books. Why would somebody die for them, or break the law by reading them? He would discover this and more by cracking the cover to a book he saved from the flame.

The story continues with some violence, an insightful monologue about why books became banned in the first place, a chase, a plot to overthrow the system, and a dim hope that there can be a better future.

The main themes the book is concerned with are censorship and the ability to make decisions based on the information providedâ€”i.e. controlling people by controlling the data that they use to make their decisions.

I'd recommend reading this book, A Brave New World, 1984, the U.S. Constitution, Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers, and the Bible and then watch the news. Ask yourself how far off a dystopian future really is, and what can still be done to avoid it.

P.S. Fahrenheit 451 was named after the temperature that paper combusts (when not directly ignited). However, the range of temperature actually varies based on many factors including composition, type, thickness, etc.

I was reviewing this book to be taught in our school by listening to it in audio format and found myself having to turn the volume down really low because of the amount of bad language in it. Not only that but there are also some dark scenes in the book such as his wife trying to commit suicide and the murder of his boss by lighting him on fire. Although this book is an unbelievable description of where we are today, I do not believe that it is suitable to be taught in a Christian school.